AmmaAmmaAmmaAmma

Sudhamani (Amma)

Amma has inspired and started innumerable humanitarian services. She is known all over the world for her love and compassion toward her fellow human beings.

As a child, Sudhamani did whatever she could to ease the suffering of her elderly neighbors. She washed their clothes, bathed them and even brought them food and clothing from her own home. This habit of giving away things from her family’s house landed her in deep trouble. However, no amount physical abuse or punishment could stop the expression of her inborn compassion. She later said, ” An unbroken stream of Love flows from me towards all beings in the cosmos. That is my inborn nature.”

Amma has dedicated her life to the uplifting of suffering humanity through the simplest of gestures, an embrace. In this intimate manner Amma has blessed and consoled more than 25 million people throughout the world.

When someone asked Amma why she receives every person who comes to her in a loving embrace Amma replied, “If you ask the river, ‘why do you flow?’ what can it say?”

Amma spends most of her waking hours receiving the distressed and all who come to her for comfort, day after day without a break.

Once asked how was it possible for her to embrace everyone in the same loving way, even if they were diseased or unpleasant, Amma replied, “When a bee hovers over a garden of varied flowers, what it beholds is not the difference between the flowers but the honey within them.” Similarly Amma sees the same Supreme Self in each and every one.”

As Dr. Jane Goodall, while presenting Amma with the 2002 Gandhi-King Award for Non-violence said, “She stands here in front of us. God’s love in a human body.”